CD Review: No Age

Everything in Between (Sub Pop)

September 29, 2010

On their third album, the Los Angeles duo No Age sound less like a My Bloody Valentine tribute band and more like the skate-punk malcontents they really are. Guitarist Randy Randall and drummer Dean Allen Spunt still allow for plenty of kaleidoscopic detours like those found on their 2008 breakthrough album, Nouns (check out "Dusted" and "Sorts," a venomous synth-noise tumble in a cement mixer). But No Age seem uncomfortably down with abject conventionality on Everything in Between — from the downer-strum "Common Heat" to the headbang literality of "Fever Dreaming," which thrashes like a windup toy gone haywire. When the group's anarchistic and conformist tendencies collide — like in "Shred and Transcend" — it's easy to be awed by their noise. But too often they come off like just another three-chord soundtrack to when you want to hole up in bed all day and watch Jackass reruns. — Ray Cummings